LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AR OQ loaa 



THE PERIL 



THE REPUBLIC, 



By W. a. TAYLOR. 






COLUMBUS, OHIO: 

NiTSCHKE Brothers, 

MDCCCLXXXVI. 






Copyrighted by W. A. Taylor, 1886. 



'* Sapiens crepidas sibi nunquam, 
Nee soleas fecit: Sutor tamen est sapiens, quo? 
Ut quamvis. tacet Hermogenes, cantor tamen, 

atque 
Optimus est modulator; est Alfenus vafer, omni 
Abjecto instrumento artis, clansaque taberna 
Sutor erat: Sapiens operis sic optimus omnis 
Est opifex solus, sic rex." 



THERE are seven classes to 
whom the accompanying ob- 
servations will neither be welcome 
nor profitable: 

1. Dishonest and mercenary pub- 
lic officials. 

2. The worshippers of Mammon. 

3. The Aristocracy of Wealth. 

4. The Corporations and Monop- 
olies that are absorbing the wealth 
of the Commonalty. 

5. The spores of European mon- 
archisms upon the body politic, who 
would degenerate liberty into license, 
and who are sowing broadcast the 



6 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

gospel of revolution and a govern- 
ment of blood and iron. 

6. Fools and sycophants, who feed 
upon the teachings of demagogues. 

7. Demagogues, who ply their vo- 
cation for the stipends they draw 
from all the other classes. 

Is it presuming too much to repose 
some confidence in the rest of man- 
kind? 



©AIH^IOJUISM 

YEI^SUS 

OpPIGIAL (sOP^^UPIiION. 



I. 



PATRIOTISM is a noble attri- 
bute in the human soul, and 
is the base upon which all other 
graces are founded. But even Patri- 
otism cannot withstand the evolu- 
tion that accompanies the ever pro- 
gressive march of events. 

It is commendable patriotism for 
men to regard the American Repub- 
lic as invincible and invulnerable 
against all attacks, either from with- 
out or within, and its lease upon 
life as perpetual. 

We are not wont to canvass and 
scan the possibilities and probabili- 
ties of its early decay and overthrow. 



10 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. 

We do not like to confess the fact 
that there is a decline in real patri- 
otism, and that a bastard growth — 
a love of the public loaves and fishes 
— is taking the place of the genuine 
article and rooting it out of the soil. 

To point out and discuss the very 
unpalatable truths involved in this 
declaration, is not only thanklessly 
unpopular, but is readily construed 
as being unpatriotic. But even at 
the unpleasant risk of being con- 
temned by the thoughtless, as being 
prompted by unpatriotic motives, we 
shall give some rather unpalatable 
views as regards the present condi- 
tion of our political affairs, which 
bespeak a complete social and politi- 
cal revolution and a radical revision 
of the political map of the continent, 
among the earlier decades of the 



PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. H 

twentieth century, unless a political 
miracle intervenes, which at present 
is not among the probabilities. The 
tendency is all in the opposite direc- 
tion, from the ward primary up to 
the administration of one of the 
great departments of the National 
Government. The prostitution of 
offices, from the lowest to the high- 
est, to the basest of purposes, self- 
aggrandizement and pecuniary gain, 
is no longer the exception. It is 
the rule. 

Because this is the case, it does 
not follow that the career of the 
country in material gain and mate- 
rial greatness, is at all endangered, 
for the present, at least. The student 
of history knows that the most 
striking epochs of the growth among 
the ancient commonwealths, were 



12 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

marked, not only by commercial 
progress and rapidly accumulated 
wealth in a national sense, but by 
the debasing practices of the office 
holding class, who in the midst of 
general prosperity, made commerce 
of politics and battened and grew 
wealthy and powerful, according to 
the degree of their opportunities, 
upon the public weal, while under 
the garb of a pretended patriotism 
they loudly protested that they were 
conserving it. 

The student of history knows, 
also, that this condition of affairs 
has invariably preceded the disrup- 
tion of the commonwealth, the carv- 
ing out of new nationalities, and the 
erection of new dynasties. 

It is a deplorable thought to a 
patriotic American citizen, to think 



PARTIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 13 

that a generation or two hence, men 
will behold not the Union of to-day, 
stretching from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific and from the St. Lawrence 
to the Gulf, but half a dozen or more 
rival nations, and perhaps not one 
of them recognizing the great cardi- 
nal doctrine of the present govern- 
ment — the right of self-government. 
But because it is a deplorable thing 
to contemplate, does that make it at 
all improbable or impossible? We 
know that before and at the time 
that Csesar, Pompey, and Crassus, 
with a becomingly modest, yet suffi- 
ciently ostentatious show of patriot- 
ism, formed the triumvirate which 
was to preserve the liberties and 
glory of Rome — and serve the pur- 
poses of the office holding class — 
that there were Roman patriots who 



14 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

foresaw, and did not hesitate to pro- 
claim, the inevitable — that the days 
of the Republic were numbered and 
the disruption of the Empire only a 
matter of mathematical calculation. 
And we also know that they were 
held in disesteem, if nothing worse, 
first, by the honest patriots who be- 
lieved the Republic was immortal 
and invincible, and second, by the 
patriots who were working the rich 
placers of public office, and absorb- 
ing the substance of the millions in 
one direction, while the commercial 
monopolies they had created, were 
doing the same thing in another 
direction. 

And yet when the plains of Phar- 
salia ran red with the blood of 
Roman factions, and a little later, 
the unpopular patriots were perhaps 



PARTIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 15 

lifted a little higher in public esteem 
— that is, they were regarded as 
prophets of evil. And yet they were 
not prophets. It does not require a 
prophet to say that if you plunge a 
fire-brand into a hogshead of water 
it will be extinguished, any more 
than it requires a prophet to solve a 
simple problem in mathematics. It 
is often unpopular to grasp the truth 
of important facts, and the man 
who does unflinchingly grasp them 
in the final crisis of a nation, gener- 
ally figures in subsequent history as 
the political prophet of his time — a 
distinction, by the way, to which he 
is not entitled. 

When we find nine money grub- 
bers to one statesman in office, at 
moderate salaries, growing visibly 
rich thereon, while living extrava- 



16 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

gantly; when we see the most effi- 
cient political leaders rise from the 
rabble — not from the ranks of the 
poor men and the workers — but 
from the rabble who toil not, but 
prey upon honest labor — from the 
purlieus on the border land of out- 
lawry; when we see the chief offices 
parcelled out in caucusses by men 
whose under jaws have greater lon- 
gitude than their craniums, and 
whose brain you would hardly injure 
by removing the head from the 
mouth upward; when we see the 
denizens of the slums and perlieus 
of the cities — the ward workers 
who commit the crimes against the 
ballot^ visit Senators and the high- 
est officials for confidential confer- 
ences, and to discuss matters of 
State, and when we see, as we have 



PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 17 

seen, a court in the National Capi- 
tal permit the trial of one set of 
thieves to drag through a year to 
the end that another set of thieves 
might bag fortunes under the sham 
title of attorney's fees, while still 
other sets of official thieves, under 
cover of the rattle of the legal ma- 
chinery, were plundering the Treas- 
ury from a dozen different direc- 
tions, the conclusion is irresistibly 
forced, that the end is not far off. 

Although Prometheus fed innu- 
merable hordes of vultures from his 
constantly renewed vitals, the feast 
did not last forever. So also the 
vitals of the Republic will cease to 
renew themselves, although at pres- 
ent they furnish a goodly feast for 
the official vultures, and the long 

retinue of political vermin who eu- 
2 



18 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

able them to fly and keep on the 
wing. 

The unselfish Roman patriot, as 
he saw, either actually, or by logical 
reasoning, the Republic transformed 
into the Empire, and the Empire 
dissolve into fragments, no doubt 
honestly believed that he beheld 
the world's total and final political 
eclipse. And yet is there a historian 
or a publicist who is bold enough to 
say that the world is better off to-day 
because the Republic of Rome once 
existed? That mankind is better or 
worse because the Csesarian dynasty 
was stamped out and a corrupt em- 
pire became a number of nations? 

Would the political and social 
conditions of to-day be different, 
either for better or for worse, had 
Caesar, and not Pompey, been de- 



PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 19 

feated on the banks of the Enipeus 
and stabbed to death on the sands 
of Egypt? Had Marc Antony and 
young Brutus, rather than Juba and 
Petreius, slain each other for patri- 
otic love and soldierly protection, at 
the bolted gates of Zama? Did the 
triumph of Wellington at the battle 
of Waterloo profit mankind? And 
had Napoleon won the day instead, 
would any of us be better or worse 
off? 

The most of us doubt the influence 
of this proximate event upon the 
present generation, while survivors 
of the tragic day are still among us 
— living witnesses of an event that 
made and unmade the political map 
of Europe. Brilliant writers, it is 
true, have speculated upon the won- 
derful train of events that would 



20 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

have followed, had not the eagle of 
the Corsican failed him at that su- 
preme moment. Yet neither tlie pro- 
foundest statesman, nor the ablest 
publicist, has told us the good or the 
evil that followed the victory of the 
Allies on that day, which makes a 
purple page in the annals of Belgium. 

The remoter days of Rome seem 
to have lost even the influence that 
experience is supposed to exert, and 
we gaze complacently at the hollow 
compact of the contemporaneous 
triumvirate, altogether too patriotic, 
or too blind, to see the end of the 
problem that must soon solve itself 
— a triumvirate in which the rapidly 
degenerating office holding class rep- 
resent Csesar, the monopolies Cras- 
sus, and the brainless shoddv aris- 
tocracy Pompey. 



PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 21 

It would indeed be curious to 
speculate on what the men of ten 
centuries hence will think, and what 
estimate they will place upon the 
perished Republic, as they seek to 
apply our somewhat uncertain and 
misty history to the current politics 
of the dozen or more nationalities 
that will then be embraced within 
our present territorial limits. 

But will that day ever come in 
the history of the Western Hemi- 
sphere ? That is a matter for further 
consideration. 



©HE I^BAL 



©HE ©f^EiPBNDBD ISSUB. 



II 



SUPERFICIAL statesmen and 
thinkers lay the flattering unc- 
tion to their souls that the only real 
danger that threatened the life of 
the Republic and the perpetuity of 
the Union, was the so-called doctrine 
of State Rights, and that that doc- 
trine was wholly abrogated and 
wiped out by the result of the war 
of the Rebellion. 

This is a beautiful theory to con- 
template, but it will not bear analy- 
sis and inspection. The truth of 
the matter is, the doctrine of State 
Rights was not involved in the late 



26 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

civil war, other than incidentally. 
It was not a direct issue. Neither 
section of the country was sincere 
as to the true object of the war, prior 
to President Lincoln's Emancipation 
Proclamation; and even afterward, 
up to Gen. Lee's surrender, the object 
was not frankly proclaimed by the 
friends of the Union. 

Looking at the subject dispassion- 
ately to-day, but little blame is to be 
bestowed because of the conceal- 
ment of the real purpose of the 
war by the National Government. 
By diplomatically pretending that 
one question was in issue, all com- 
plications were kept out of the real 
one, and it was successfully and sat- 
isfactorily settled. 

What was the real, and what was 
the assumed, question at issue in 



THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 27 

the late civil war? The real issue, 
as regards the North, which repre- 
sented the whole government, was 
the extinction of human slavery. 
The progress and civilization of the 
age demanded its extinction, without 
regard to the form of political gov- 
ernment anywhere in Christendom. 
Chattel slavery was as repugnant to 
the most absolute monarchy, as to 
the Abolitionists of the Northern 
States. The real issue, so far as the 
South was concerned, was both the 
perpetuation and extension of chat- 
tel slavery. Had the Confederacy 
triumphed, it would not have been 
content with territorial and political 
independence. The conquest of the 
North and the extension of slavery 
would have been the logical sequence 
of the war. 



28 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

But did the South frankly admit 
and proclaim that their real object 
was the perpetuation and extension 
of slavery? No. It was not politic 
to do so. They justified the act of 
secession of the. several States by 
falsely assuming that it was merely 
the vindication of State Rights, in 
the exercise of which any State 
might secede when dissatisfied with, 
or menaced by the central govern- 
ment. By so doing alone could 
they justify themselves in the eyes 
of civilized nations, or hope for 
sympathy and recognition. Yet 
every secession statesman knew that 
the pretended issue was a false one. 

Did the North frankly admit and 
declare that the real issue was the 
abolition of slavery? No. It was 
not politic to do so. Nine-tenths 



THE KEAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 29 

of the men of the North of a mili- 
tary age, believed in the constitu- 
tional right of the people of the 
South to hold human beings as chat- 
tels, and so great was their reverence 
for these conceded rights, that it 
would have been impossible to have 
recruited armies upon the naked 
issue of depriving the South of their 
''constitutional rights." And yet 
the statesmen and the captains of 
the North knew that the real issue 
was not to extirpate the doctrine of 
State Rights, but slavery. The rec- 
ognition of the issue was gradual, 
and the reprimands administered 
to Gens. Fremont, Hunter, and 
others, early in the contest, look 
grotesque when read in the light 
of President Lincoln's memorable 
proclamation, in which the true 



30 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

issue of the war was discernible. 

Some of the ablest and most dis- 
tinguished officers of the North in 
the war were men who believed in 
State Rights and hated slavery; men 
who went into the war fully under- 
standing the issue, and came out of 
it with their faith in State Rights 
unshaken, and they still retain it. 
Gen. Butler is a believer in State 
Rights to-day as he always was. 
Gen. Grant died a believer in the 
doctrine, as does Sheridan and did 
Hancock. Not the so-called doc- 
trine of State Rights which declared 
the right of secession, but the doc- 
trine of the independence and equal- 
ity of the States in the federal com- 
pact. 

This anomaly will arrest the at- 
tention of the future historian who 



THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE, 31 

deals intelligently with the great 
civil war, in which he will find the 
South pretending to an issue of State 
Sovereignty for the purpose of en- 
listing the civilized world in the 
cause of slavery, while the North 
pretended to make war against State 
Sovereignty, as a foil to the real 
purpose, and to overcome the con- 
stitutional scruples of their citizens 
in the great work of overthrowing 
human slavery. We do not believe 
that the outcome would have been 
as beneficent and happy, had the 
real issue been made in the begin- 
ning. The " war necessity " solved 
a problem over which statesmen 
would have wrangled resultlessly for 
years, as they had been wrangling 
under cover of a system of false 
pretenses from 1820 down to 1860. 



32 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

The men who took part in the war 
remember the bitter and acrimoni- 
ous denunciations that were hurled 
at Hinton Rowan Helper, who pro- 
mulgated the " Impending Crisis," 
and the declaration of an '' irrepres- 
sible conflict" between freedom and 
slavery, by Abraham Lincoln. The 
latter was made in a local campaign, 
and its true significance was hardly 
appreciated either by the political 
friends or enemies of Mr. Lincoln 
at the time. But in 1860, the "ir- 
repressible conflict" doctrine was 
given national prominence, and even 
with the fatal split in the Democratic 
party, came near losing him the 
Presidency. The Republican press 
and speakers of the day, by a mighty 
and combined effort, succeeded in 
explaining, in a plausible way, that 



THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 33 

Mr. Lincoln meant nothing inimical 
to slavery in what he had said, but 
only treated the matter as an ab- 
stract question of political science. 
By so doing they succeeded in hold- 
ing a large body of conservative 
Whigs and Democrats who had 
joined the Republican party subse- 
quent to 1856, and carried enough 
of the Northern States to elect him. 
Mr. Lincoln, himself, was appealed 
to, to explain or modify what he had 
said, but steadily declined to do so, 
much to the annoyance and discom- 
fiture of the party managers. 

Both Lincoln and Helper merely 

drew logical conclusions from a 

study of existing and recognized 

facts. There was a crisis impending 

in the history of human slavery, 

and the conflict was irrepressible, 
3 



34 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

It began the moment Massachusetts 
could no longer steal slaves in Africa 
and sell them in South Carolina, 
Alabama,' Georgia, and other parts 
of the South — just as we shall see 
in a few years a strange revolution 
of local sentiment on the tariff 
question. A half a century or so 
ago, South Carolina sought to secede 
from the Union, on account of the 
tariff laws, which were unquestion- 
ably almost solely in the interest 
of the New England States. Now 
Massachusetts and New England are 
getting ready to demand free trade, 
while South Carolina and the Cotton 
States are becoming saturated with 
the doctrine of protective tariff — 
the fostering of home manufactures. 
Inside of a generation nearly all the 
cotton and print mills of New 



! 



THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 35 

England will be closed. The South 
will manufacture as well as raise the 
cotton, and this will largely draw in 
sympathy the major portion of sev- 
eral of the leading industries thither. 
New England not being able to com- 
pete with the new field, will become 
a commercial instead of a manufact- 
uring section, and then a protec- 
tive tariff will become burdensome 
to it. 

Inside of a century the conditions 
will be entirely reversed, and the 
cradle of '' protection " will become 
the abiding place of free trade, and 
the tariff question, in spite of the 
wisest endeavors of real or assumed 
statesmen, will be a radically sec- 
tional one, and we will see the doc- 
trine of State Rights assert itself in 
a new quarter — a real issue of State 



36 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Sovereignty — perhaps in several 
sections at the same time, under 
new conditions, and under circum- 
stances that will make the dismem- 
berment of the Union inevitable, if, 
indeed, it is not acquiesced in by the 
powerful and controlling sections. 

Territorial limits do not usually 
determine the extent of a nation- 
ality. But even if they did, we 
have territory enough for a dozen 
more powerful nationalities than 
either of the great European powers, 
with Canada on one hand and 
Mexico on the other to divide into 
provinces and dependencies. We 
have only been growing people on 
the continent so far — we will begin 
to grow nations after while. 

The rule is, that military nations, 
or nations governed by military men 



THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 37 

and ideas, extend their boundaries, 
annex adjacent territory, and acquire 
dependencies. But this country is 
an exception. While we are excel- 
lent fighters we are not a military 
people. And yet we have acquired, 
partly by conquest, but more largely 
by purchase, an extent of territory 
equal to all habitable Europe, in 
addition to the vast area of the 
original thirteen States and their 
territorial appurtenances. 

As long as our population — in- 
creasing as rapidly as it does — could 
spread itself over this vast domain, 
reaping the benefits of a single con- 
stitutional form of government, with 
plenty of elbow room for everybody 
in all sections, the nation naturally 
cohered, as there was no impelling 
cause toward several separate nation- 



38 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

alities, save in the instance of civil 
war referred to. 

But when we begin to crowd upon 
one another, as we are now begin- 
ning to do — when great commercial, 
political, and social interests begin 
to grow up in one section, and an- 
tagonistic interests grow as strongly 
in another; when the ambitious pol- 
iticians get a real rabble behind 
them; when the office holding class 
have enough retainers and depend- 
ents in their favor to turn the scale 
of the ballot-box, and when this office 
holding class and its following begin 
to break into factions, and there are 
not rooms enough in one house to 
accommodate all the lodgers, then 
comes the supreme peril of the 
Republic as a political fabric, and 
the Union as a national autonomy. 



THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 39 

It is not in the nature of alarmism 
to say that we are approaching that 
condition of affairs very rapidly at 
this time. 



Bl^AIN 



AS A 



BAP^ SlNISfPBP^. 



III. 



THERE are certain things that 
every observant person must 
have noticed, which show that the 
tide is setting strongly against a 
Democratic-Republican government. 
Ninety per cent, of our people 
measure men by two standards, im- 
plied in these questions: 1st, Is he 
wealthy? 2d, Is he a successful 
politician? An affirmative answer 
entitles him to rank among the 
nobility; a negative answer consigns 
him to the lower rank. 

It does not matter what mere out- 
ward form of government a nation 



44 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

may have, it is simply a debased 
form of monarchy, where wealth 
is the chief claim of distinction. 
Men's obituaries are long or short 
according to the length of their rent 
rolls, their stock accounts, and their 
bank balances. A man who has 
robbed his employes during a life 
time, and sent men, women, and 
children to premature graves by 
means of under-pay and over-work, 
figures in the obituary columns of 
the publications, as one of the dis- 
tinguished men of the age and 
country — provided he leaves a few 
million dollars, as a monument to 
his heartless robberies, behind him. 

It is not the wealthy alone that 
pay tribute to wealth. The middled 
classes and the most abjectly poor 
do the same thing. They look with 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 45 

pity or contempt upon men of brain, 
who struggle through life and die 
amid impoverished surroundings, 
trying to improve mankind, and 
teach the doctrine that the wealth 
of the intellect is greater than the 
wealth of the pocket. 

Such men are looked upon as 
little better than lunatics. They are 
kicked out of '' society," not because 
they are not respectable; not because 
they are not talented and cultured; 
but simply because they are not 
wealthy. The inquisition of " soci- 
ety" extends no further than the 
candidate's bank account. If that 
is satisfactory, the "permit" is is- 
sued without further enquiry. If it 
is unsatisfactory, the case is dis- 
missed and the candidate sent hence 
without day. 



46 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Men of wealth, and successful in- 
triguing politicians, whose success 
gives them control, if not actual 
possession, of vast sums of money 
and great material interests, destitute 
of brain, but possessed of a good 
share of cunning and shrewdness, 
are the rulers of this country, and 
are as absolute monarch s as may be 
found in Christendom. 

If you place a pint of water in a 
basin and drop a sponge into it, 
every particle of moisture is quickly 
absorbed. But if you should place 
a piece of granite in it, not a drop 
of the water is withdrawn from the 
use of the creatures of nature. 

The moneyed aristocracy repre- 
sents the sponge. It speedily ab- 
sorbs all the comforts of life in a 
nation, giving luxury to a limited 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 47 

class, and want and a bitter struggle 
to the vast majority. Brain repre- 
sents granite. Its increase or recog- 
nition does not decrease men's op- 
portunities, but on the contrary 
spreads them over a greater surface. 

It is a pretty custom in our schools 
to honor the memories of really 
great men — who lived one hundred 
or five hundred years ago. But the 
application is defective. A Gold- 
smith or a Wilberforce is given as 
the ancient example — a Gould or a 
Vanderbilt as the modern subject 
for study. The rising generation 
should be taught that no liberal 
government ever survived the per- 
manent establishment of a moneyed 
aristocracy. Its survival would be 
an impossibility. And yet' 99 per 
cent, of all the directed and con- 



48 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

eentrated effort of the country, and 
95 per cent, of all the vital legisla- 
tion, State and National, is toward 
the building up of a wealthy, and 
necessarily governing class. This is 
not a very encouraging view of the 
situation, but it must be recognized 
sooner or later. We had as well 
recognize it now, as to have our 
children and grandchildren con- 
temning our lack of foresight and 
logical powers of reasoning. 

Mankind, in this country, espe- 
cially, have a queer way of making 
applications. There is much prating 
about temperance. The unfortunate 
victim of alcohol, and the small 
retailer — as long as he is in mod- 
erate circumstances and active busi- 
ness — comes in for a vast amount 
of moralization, or denunciation, as 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 49 

the case may be. But the force of 
the argument is defeated by the 
facts that are woven into surround- 
ing society — by the absolution that 
the wordiest temperance advocate is 
willing to lay upon the altar of 
wealth. Who are quite a number 
of the "pillars of society?" Men 
who yet carry about them the odors 
of the still, and who have behind 
them graveyards that are plethoric 
with the slaughtered victims of alco- 
hol; shrewd manipulators of whisky 
rings; successful engineers of cotton 
speculations; men who played the 
shark a few years ago as successful 
gamblers, brainless and mercenary 
to the last degree, but whose wealth 
makes them potentates in that " so- 
ciety" which looks with lofty and 

parvenue contempt upon cultivated 
4 



60 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

intellect in a setting of poverty. 

In truth, intellectual gifts are 
about the only stain in the estima- 
tion of *' society," that wealth will 
not efface. We could give a notable 
instance in which a gentleman was 
a few years ago forced to relinquish 
a high official position, because '' so- 
ciety" could not forgive him the 
possession of brains and conscience, 
as well as money, and accordingly 
failed to "recognize" him. A bar 
sinister in his escutcheon would have 
been readily gilded over by his 
princely fortune. Had he been a re- 
formed pirate or an unconvicted, and 
consequently wealthy, Star Route 
conspirator, with just enough brains 
to simper common places and betray 
his ignorance to educated men and 
women, the door of '' society " would 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 51 

have been wide open to him. But 
he had brains, and that was the 
unpardonable sin that even wealth 
could not wipe out, in the estimation 
of the disciples of Mammon. 

Politics and '' society ^' run in the 
same groove. We see men — and 
plenty of them — in the United 
States Senate, whose chief merits 
are the possession of $5,000,000 or 
$10,000,000 or $30,000,000, a pro- 
found reverence for the judicious 
distribution of the public plunder, 
or an unlimited stock of ignorance 
of statesmanship and political econ- 
omy, or a marvellous talent for 
draw poker and vulgar display, who 
command greater attention, and 
have an immeasurably larger fol- 
lowing than such men as the able 
Senator from Vermont — for they 



52 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

have their millions, while Geo. F. 
Edmunds has nothing but his brains. 

We see that prince of American 
statesmen, Allen G Thurman, living 
in honored retirement, simply be- 
cause he was a statesman of broad 
and enlightened views, and inter- 
posed the spear of his incontroverti- 
ble logic between the horde of har- 
pies and the political inheritance 
of posterity. Every aggrandized 
corporation in the nation unlocked 
its coffers and distributed corruption 
funds from the primaries to the 
polls, to keep him from thundering 
against them in the Nation's forum. 
They poured out money like water 
to prevent him from reaching the 
Presidency; and now in his green 
and vigorous old age, in the calm 
and quiet of his home, whose every 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER 53 

comfort he earned with honest toil 
of hand and brain, they have him 
environed by skilled liars and slan- 
derers, and watched by spies and 
Janus-faced knaves, least, haply, 
some wise suggestion of his might 
reach the ears of the Democratic Ad- 
ministration, and militate against 
the schemes, and the schemers, who 
are trying to adjust themselves to a 
change of parties. 

These are but isolated instances 
out of hundreds that might be as 
pointedly advanced. If any one 
imagines that the Republic can long 
withstand the present tendency to 
deify wealth and trample intellect 
under foot, he is certainly ignorant 
of all the lessons of history. There 
is no record of any liberal govern- 
ment that survived the final decay 



54 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

of the aristocracy of intellect. There 
is no record of a liberal government 
in which a moneyed aristocracy was 
the ruling factor, and there will be 
no such record, even on that day 
when ''the heavens shall be rolled 
together as a scroll." 

It will, doubtless, be objected that 
this is a sordid view of modern and 
American society. But in the light 
of all the surrounding circumstances, 
politically and socially, and so closely 
interwoven, and with an unmistaka- 
ble trend, what other view shall we 
take, and have a proper regard for 
the truth and existing facts? It 
would be a great relief to be satis- 
factorily convinced that this view is 
a mistaken one. 

But unhappily it is too true to be 
ignored or passed over in silence by 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 55 

the writer of to-day who has the 
boldness to grapple with the actual 
problems of the age. As a nation 
we have entered upon the sordid 
era, in which shrewdness and heart- 
less cunning are palmed off as talent, 
and wealth is set up as the only 
standard of distinction. This is the 
rule, and there are honorable excep- 
tions to it, of course, but the excep- 
tion is not sufficient to stay the en- 
croachments of the inevitable flood. 
We are only committing the com- 
mon mistake of all countries in as- 
suming that national wealth and 
national greatness are synonymous 
terms, and then carrying the false 
dogma to the extent of legislating in 
favor of monopoly and against pro- 
ductive labor, to the end that a 
limited number of persons shall 



56 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

absorb and control all the wealth — 
that the hundreds shall be sovereigns 
and the millions shall be serfs, in 
fact, if not in name. 

The complaint that at our popular 
elections money, rather than ability 
and honesty, is the controlling and 
potent factor, is well-founded ; in fact, 
it has become the rule rather than 
the exception. For months a num- 
ber of men were on trial in the 
National Capital on the charge of 
stealing millions from the National 
Treasury. These millions seem to 
have been divided about equally be- 
tween the private exchequers of the 
thieves and the corruption coffers 
of the party to which they professed 
allegiance. 

In fact, the principal thief of the 
gang held the money bags of his 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 57 

party, taking them to the treasury 
vaults and filling them from the 
public funds, defiantly and almost 
openly, after the robbery had been 
pointed out and denounced in the 
public press. The time was when 
such a revelation would have caused 
a popular uprising that would have 
driven the party and the adminis- 
tration from power and into igno- 
minious retirement. That it failed 
to excite even serious public con- 
cern, shows how rapidly the public 
virtue is dying out, and the inevita- 
bly speedy overthrow of the existing 
form of government. In fact, the 
Republic is dead the moment a 
majority of the ballots become a 
purchasable commodity. 

The fact that there are politicians 
and office seekers corrupt enough to 



58 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

purchase an election, is a puny evil 
in comparison with the fact that 
money can be successfully used in 
the purchase of votes. As long as 
the people themselves are virtuous, 
and their ballots unpurchasable, the 
political institutions are safe, be the 
number of corrupt politicians great 
or small. But when a large propor- 
tion of them become the stipendi- 
aries of corrupt place seekers, and 
grasping moneyed aristocrats, work- 
ing through their hired tools in 
legislatures and Congress, the Re- 
public indeed becomes a hollow 
mockery and a sham. 

It does not follow that a man must 
necessarily be rich to buy his way 
into an office. We see, on the con- 
trary, men starting up from the 
slums, whose only characteristic is 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 59 

brazen effrontery, who were never 
known to earn a living by honest 
toil, proclaiming themselves the 
champions of labor and economy — 
men whose impecuniosity had grown 
into a proverb, and who suddenly 
open a mine of wealth that enables 
them to hire the rabble in all the 
stages, from the primary to the 
formal ballot. 

Where do they get the money? 
One has only to watch their official 
course, especially if they get legisla- 
tive positions, to solve the mystery. 
They are found to be the champions 
of corporations and combinations 
which are systematically engaged in 
the absorption and concentration of 
the wealth of the country into a 
few hands. The men at the head 
of these combinations are shrewd 



60 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC, 

enough to know that they must not 
be seen in the management and 
shaping of public affairs, least their 
motives be suspected. They invest 
their money in legislators, judges, 
and other public officials as a matter 
of business, and they make immense 
dividends upon the investment. 

Is there, then, much of a mystery 
about the matter, when we find a 
man, who could never keep his 
grocery accounts squared, spending 
$2,000 to get an office with $1,000 
apparent emoluments, and growing 
rich by making such dispropor- 
tionate investments? 

How many have we in our own 
midst who are engaged in this sort 
of business? We submit these sug- 
gestions as an answer to all possible 
complaints. We think that the 



BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 61 

reader will agree with us that they 
are well founded. 

The apathy of the people and the 
constituted authorities, and the im- 
munities enjoyed by derelict officials, 
who happen to be backed by power- 
ful friends and combinations, ought 
to suggest that we have not over- 
drawn the picture of the condition 
of affairs. 



©HE Signals 



OP 



^PPf^OAGHING DaNGBI^. 



IV, 



THERE are five things that un- 
mistakably mark the crisis 
of political institutions. 

1 . The decadence of public virtue. 

2. The passion for wealth and os- 
tentation. 

3. The creation of commercial and 
monetary monopolies under the 
auspices of the government. 

4. When religious teachers vie 
with each other in feeding their dev- 
otees on sensations, and when public 
instructors teach licentiousness and 
depravity. 



66 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

5. When a moneyed aristocracy 
combine with the governing and 
office-holding class for a common 
end — the plundering of the masses 
for self-aggrandizement. 

All these are the effective minis- 
ters of tyranny and despotism, and 
all these we have, in a greater or less 
degree of development. 

1. The decadence of public virtue. 
Is not the public virtue indeed in a 
deplorable condition ? The civil war 
was a gigantic blister that cured the 
ailment to which it was applied — 
extinguishing that relic of barbar- 
ism, slavery — but the surgeons in 
charge seem to have neglected to 
properly treat the wound which nec- 
essarily ensued. That blister, ap- 
plied for a noble and lofty purpose, 
brought all the bad humors of the 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 67 

body politic to the surface, and the 
political surgeons instead of remov- 
ing them, let them remain and fos- 
tered them, as common quacks do, to 
augment their fees and prolong their 
custody of the patient. The extent 
of official malfeasance, from Cabinet 
officials down to the smallest town- 
ship offices, within the past fifteen 
years, is something appalling to 
contemplate. 

No statistician has been bold 
enough to tabulate them. Such a 
tabulation would stand as a moun- 
tain of accusation against the theory 
of self-government — just as some 
Generals dare not make public the 
list of their dead after gaining a 
victory. This epidemic of malver- 
sation would not be dangerous, if it 
excited either public apprehension 



68 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

or public indignation. But instead 
of doing either, it commands secret 
approval while it lulls the unthink- 
ing portion of the public into a 
lethargic apathy. 

In the general scramble for wealth, 
the management of public affairs is 
consigned to characterless intriguers, 
who know only too well how to utilize 
the public apathy. Now and then a 
statesman — looking deep into futu- 
rity — arises and protests. And 
then his political friends and ene- 
mies, by common consent, unite and 
ostracise him. The counsels of the 
greatest statesmen and purest patri- 
ots of the age, Thurman, of Ohio, 
and Edmunds, of Vermont, have 
less weight with their respective 
parties than characterless men who 
do not look beyond their own im- 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 69 

mediate advantage, and who follow 
'' politics " for the money there is in 
the business. Here is the beginning 
of the corruptions that have honey- 
combed the entire political fabric. 

Men go into office little else than 
paupers, and accumulate indepen- 
dent fortunes in a single term, thus 
enabling them to fasten themselves 
upon the public treasury, and still 
the public apprehension is not 
aroused to the point of action. 
Almost twenty-three centuries ago, 
Demosthenes, in one of his memora- 
ble Phillipics, depicting the deca- 
dence of the Athenian Democracy, 
said: 

" There must be some cause, some 
good reason, why the Greeks were so 
eager for liberty then, and now are 
so eager for servitude. - There was 



70 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

something in the hearts of the mul- 
titude then, which there is not now, 
which overcome the wealth of Persia, 
and maintained the freedom of 
Greece, and quailed not under any 
battle by sea or land, the loss where- 
of had ruined all and thrown the 
Greek world into confusion. What 
is this? No subtlety or cleverness; 
simply this, that whoever took a 
bribe from the aspirants to power or 
the corruptors of Greece was univer- 
sally abhorred. It was a fearful 
thing to be convicted of bribery; 
the severest punishment was inflicted 
on the guilty, and there was no inter- 
cession or pardon. The favorable 
moments for enterprise which fort- 
une frequently offers to the careless 
against the vigilant, to them who will 
do nothing, against those who dis- 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 71 

charge their entire duty, could not 
be bought from orators or generals; 
no more could mutual concord, nor 
distrust of tyrants and barbarians, 
nor anything of the kind. But now 
all such principles have been sold 
as in open market, and principles 
imported in exchange by which 
Greece is ruined and diseased. What 
are they? Envy, when a man gets 
a bribe; laughter, if he confesses it; 
hatred of those who denounce the 
crime — all the usual accompani- 
ments of corruption." 

These words were spoken to the 
tottering Republic of Athens — 
which falsely imagined itself invin- 
cible — three hundred and forty-one 
years before the Christian era. And 
now after the lapse of more than 
twenty-two hundred years, they may 



72 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

be spoken truthfully, and almost 
without a modification, of the great 
Republic of the West. The people 
of Athens might have restored the 
public virtue, but they regarded 
Demosthenes as an alarmist. We 
all know what befell Greece. And 
all of us, who choose to apply the 
logic of events, see that our own 
government is following directly in 
her footsteps. 

2. In a former chapter we pointed 
out the prevailing mania for money- 
grubbing to the exclusion of all 
loftier ambitions — the rapid growth, 
largely under government protection, 
of an aristocracy of wealth which 
has declared perpetual and remorse- 
less war upon the natural aristoc- 
racy, the aristocracy of brains. '' He 
is worth a million dollars," is, to-day 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER 73 

a higher recommendation to a man 
than the greatest service he can 
perform for mankind. A man may 
be a scholar, a thinker, a statesman, 
but if he is poor, he is spurned 
aside to make room for the rich 
ignoramus. When a man is the 
victim of both brains and poverty, 
his condition is deplorable indeed. 
If a man is so unfortunate as to be 
poor, the road to success lies in 
cultivating ignorance and chicanery. 
The latter will pass for mental 
ability, and each thousand dollars 
he adds to his wealth will hide some 
blemish of character. We do not 
submit this as advice to young men. 
We merely state a fact which stands 
to the discredit of the age. 

Ex-President and Gen. Ulysses S. 
Grant furnished a striking example 



74 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. 

of the reign of Mammon, and the 
absolute despotism he exercises. It 
is to his credit that he came out 
of the war as poor as he went into 
it. For eight years " society," the 
moneyed aristocracy, either held 
him at arm's length or treated him 
as a curiosity, a sort of a rough 
diamond. Then for reasons that 
must be obvious to thoughtful men, 
this same "society" concluded to 
adopt him. How did they go about 
it? Each took a portion of his 
surplus wealth, threw it into a com- 
mon fund, and made a millionaire 
out of the impecunious General. 
This was only a modification of the 
way in which a king or an emperor 
ennobles a man whom he can make 
useful. Grant's acceptance of that 
gift will be the one thing that will 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 75 

stand against him when the future 
historian writes the history of the 
riotous career of the moneyed aris- 
tocracy of this nation. 

The distinguished General and 
patriot had too much faith in man- 
kind, and was — be it said to his 
undying credit — too unlettered in 
the growing chicane of the age, to 
see or suspect the base deception 
that was practiced upon him. The 
same chicane and intrigue which 
conceived and carried out the idea 
of making the successful leader 
of our armies a member of the 
moneyed aristocracy, dragged him 
into the toils of the great bank 
swindler, whose gigantic crimes 
broke the heart and spirit of the 
straightforward and simple minded 
soldier, and sent him to his grave 



76 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

years before his time. But, fortu- 
nately, no stain or obloquy can per- 
manently tarnish the glory of his 
name. 

3. The creation of commercial 
and moneyed monopolies under the 
auspices of government. These we 
see in continual process of erection 
around us. It is the rule to clothe 
associated capital with privileges 
and immunities that no private citi- 
zen is permitted to enjoy. The 
result is that the rich confederate 
together to secure the advantages 
of an unwise policy of legislation. 
Great corporations created by the 
government, clothed with almost 
sovereign privileges, already defy its 
creator in Congress and the courts. 
Within a bow shot of where we 
write, lives in honored retirement 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER 77 

one of the foremost statesmen of the 
century in any country, who was 
driven out of the nation's councils, 
because he dared to put a curb bit in 
the mouths of these insolent and 
opulent corporations. We refer to 
ex-Senator Allen G. Thurman — and 
up among the mountains of Vermont 
the same corporations are laying the 
ropes to ensnare, and render hors de 
combat, his great and worthy co- 
adjutor, Senator Geo. F. Edmunds. 
These insolent creatures of a mis- 
taken government will take care that 
no real statesman shall control the 
policy of the people's Congress. 

4. A high order of religious sen- 
timent — not the mere outward pro- 
fession of religion — is essential to 
the stability of any form of govern- 
ment. This has been the history 



78 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. 

of the world in Pagan, Jewish, Mus- 
selman, and Christian countries, 
alike. Grotesque religious sensa- 
tions invariably precede religious 
zealots and religious excesses, and 
with the latter come revolutions that 
go to the bottom of the whole fabric. 
We have now reached the sensational 
period, and the mountebank is in 
demand. The sensational preacher 
is the order of the day, and his 
impious balderdash commands a 
high premium. One society and 
one community vie with another to 
get possession of the greatest sensa- 
tionalist. The wheel has moved 
around, and the religious charla- 
tanry of the third and fourth centu- 
ries begins to manifest itself toward 
the close of the nineteenth. It 
varies but little from its pagan pro- 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER 79 

totype of three thousand years ago, 
or its more recent parallel of the 
Middle Ages. It conforms itself to 
its surroundings, but it is the out- 
growth of the same principle. It 
manifests itself in all civilized com- 
munities, but in this country more 
fully than in any other. 

The great public instructor in this 
country to-day is the press. The 
schools and the pulpit, which were, 
in their day, the public instructors, 
are now only auxiliaries to the 
press. And the press is largely 
licentious; that is to say, a large 
proportion of the press is licentious. 
It depraves and debauches where it 
should ennoble and elevate. It is 
licentious because it is mercenary. 
The publisher counts his own gains, 
not the gains of mankind at large. 



80 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Debased and depraved publications 
find a ready market. The higher 
order of thought goes begging, with 
here and there a patron and a friend. 
This has reference to newspaper 
publications. 

The temptation is all in the direc- 
tion of the depraved and the de- 
bauching. The mountains of dis- 
couragement are placed in the 
pathway of the man who under- 
takes to elevate mankind by en- 
nobling journalism. The merchant 
prefers to advertise and pour his 
money into the coffers of the news- 
paper thaf fills its columns with the 
reeking filth of the slums, rather 
than the newspaper which he is 
willing his wife and children should 
read. The result is that the public 
instructor — the press — bitten by 



THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER, g] 

the cankerworm of mercenary gain, 
becomes debauched, and men won- 
der that crime and social corruption 
increase. 

5. There is a natural affinity be- 
tween the moneyed aristocracy and 
the office-holding class. They be- 
come mutually helpful to each other, 
and each succeeding political cam- 
paign sees them in closer alliance. 
Neither of them want a change — 
the office-holders because the change 
deprives them of power and emolu- 
ments — the aristocracy because the 
change might deprive them of priv- 
ileges and immunities already held. 

All attempts to reform the public 
service is met with such a violence 
of opposition, and in quarters so 
unexpected at times, as to give force 
to the idea that the greatest crime 



82 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

a man can commit in public office is 
to be honest and efficient, and refuse 
to lend himself and his official 
power and influence to the plunder 
of the public treasury and the 
enrichment of party favorites. 



I70NBSIPY 



AN 



INHEI^ENIP ^l^INGIPIiB, 



V. 



THESE views of the tendency 
of the times are not new, even 
if they should strike a reader, now 
and then, as startling. We have 
endeavored to state each point in 
plain, blunt Anglo-Saxon, for the 
very immensity of the subject itself 
makes all rhetorical flourishes and 
ornamentation unnecessary. Shortly 
before his death, the late Judge 
Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania, 
gave to the public a paper which 
well might challenge the attention 
of the most unthinking. In refer- 



86 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

ring to the prevailing shortcomings 
of the office-holding class, and men 
in positions of public trust and 
responsibility, Judge Black observes: 

'^ I aver that a man or a corpora- 
tion, appointed to do a public duty, 
must perform it with an eye single 
to the public interest. If he perverts 
his authority to purposes of private 
gain, he is guilty of corruption, and 
all who aid and abet him are his 
accomplices in crime. He defiles 
himself if he mingles his own busi- 
ness with that intrusted to him by 
the Government, and uses one to 
promote the other. 

''I am able to maintain that all 
the corruption and misgovernment 
with which the earth is cursed, grows 
out of the fatal proclivity of public 
servants to make a business of their 



HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 87 

duty. Recall the worst cases that 
have occurred in our history, and see 
if every one of them does not resolve 
itself into that. Tweed and his 
associates in New York, the Phila- 
delphia Rings, the carpet-bag thieves, 
the Star Route conspirators, all went 
into business for themselves while 
pretending to be engaged in the pub- 
lic service. Oakes Ames distributed 
the stock of the Credit Mobilier 
where he thought it would do the 
most good to himself and others 
with whom he was connected, and 
that was business in him who gave 
and in those who took his bribes." 

This is but a simple statement 
of facts that must be patent to the 
least thinking of men, and a state- 
ment that carries with it all the 
force of a statesman's warning. 



88 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

If the spirit which he points out 
were on the decline; if it were dead 
and extinct; if the force of public 
opinion were concentrated against 
it, we might look at the matter with- 
out apprehension, and with reason- 
able faith in the future. 

But so far from being on the 
decline, its growth is perceptible and- 
on the increase. 

To plunder the whole body of the 
people by means of official chicanery 
is not only the fashion, but has 
become a regular profession. 

It is a profession that has defend- 
ers among men outside the official 
class, and of recognized honesty 
and respectability. 

Suppose we give a very recent 
case in point. A short time ago it 
was discovered that a number of 



HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 89 

clerks in the financial department 
of the government of the city of 
New York were engaged in stealing 
by means of selling to confederates 
outside, the coupons of bonds which 
had been paid on presentation. It 
was the duty of these clerks to 
cancel the coupons, but instead of 
doing so, large amounts of them 
were presented for redemption a 
second time in the mode indicated. 

The Commissioners of Accounts 
investigated and reported on this 
systematic plan of public robbery 
and peculation. Some of their con- 
clusions were remarkable, and no 
doubt unconsciously to themselves, 
they became the apologists of 
the thieves. Take for instance 
the following specimen of their 
logic: 



90 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

'' It is certain," they say, ''that no 
system or organization can succeed 
without the aid of honest and capable 
agents and clerks, and it cannot be 
supposed that they can be had unless 
reasonable salaries are paid. The 
business man, as a rule, pays for 
honesty, talent, and experience, and 
gets it. It cannot fairly be consid- 
ered that $1,100, $1,250, or $1,300 a 
year is reasonable salary for a clerk 
who has the responsibility of hand- 
ling and accounting for millions of 
dollars a year." 

We are in favor of paying public 
officials fair and reasonable salaries 
for the services they perform for the 
public, the same as we are in favor 
of men receiving fair wages for the 
services they perform for private 
citizens. But we do not believe 



HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 91 

in this system of thieves' logic. 
You cannot make a man honest 
by paying him a price for his hon- 
esty. The very acceptance of it 
makes him a bribe taker and neces- 
sarily dishonest. An honest man 
will handle a million dollars just as 
honestly as he will ten thousand, 
and never think about his salary 
being too small to keep him within 
the line of honesty. 

A man's responsibility in dollars 
and cents is no criterion in estab- 
lishing the value of his services, for 
the public official who handles a 
million dollars in a year may have 
less actual manual and mental labor 
to perform than the man who han- 
dles only one-tenth of that sum, or, 
possibly, never touches a dollar of 
the public funds. 



92 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

If he is a dishonest man, his 
salary is too small for him, it matters 
not how large it may be. 

Every man who abuses a public or 
private trust, and robs the govern- 
ment or his employer, excuses him- 
self by pleading inadequacy of sal- 
ary. " If I had received double the 
salary, there would have been no 
necessity for me turning thief," he 
says in extenuation of his crime, and 
the public is disposed to accept this 
as a palliation, if not a conclusive 
defense. 

The man who is not honest on a 
salary of $1,200 a year will not be 
honest on a salary of $2,400 a year. 
This may be set down as an immu- 
table fact. The public official, as 
well as the private offender, is dis- 
honest: 1. Because he has the in- 



HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 93 

clination. 2. Because he has the 
opportunity. Wherever and when- 
ever the first exists, the second will 
be taken advantage of as soon as it 
presents itself. 

As Judge Black so tersely says, 
all the corruptions of government 
arise from the fact that public ser- 
vants make a business of their duty. 
They proceed upon the assumption 
that they owe everything to them- 
selves and nothing to the public — 
that public office is simply a means 
and an opportunity to augment their 
private fortunes. 

Even in the most profligate gov- 
ernments the wealthy class suffer 
comparatively little from the depre- 
dations of dishonest officials. The 
stolen money is all paid by the 
middle classes and the day laborers. 



94 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

If the stealings increase the burdens 
of public taxation, the wealthy sim- 
ply increase the tribute which the 
masses are forced to pay them, and 
thus make up the deficit without 
any impairment of their own capi- 
tal. On the contrary they seize upon 
it as a pretext for adding to their 
own fortunes. 

If the landlord finds that his 
taxes increase ^ve dollars, he makes 
it a pretext to collect ten dollars 
additional rent, and profits thereby. 

It is the laboring class, therefore, 
who are more deeply interested in 
official honesty than any other, for 
it is an undisputed historical fact, 
that a moneyed aristocracy and offi- 
cial and political corruption and dis- 
honesty fiourish contemporaneously. 
And being thus interested, the labor- 



HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 95 

ing and producing masses should 
see that honest men are chosen to 
fill the offices. The man who sells 
his vote at any price, is mistaken 
when he thinks he gets anything for 
it. The bribe giver and his associ- 
ates rob the bribe taker over and 
over again by indirect means — rob 
him once to enrich the dishonest 
public official and once to enrich 
the wealthy class, who become the 
toll gatherers between the masses 
who pay, and the men who despoil 
the treasury — and the toll gatherers 
are sure to charge a heavy commis- 
sion. 

Men who judge the world by 
their immediate surroundings, sel- 
dom make a mistake in the aggregate 
estimate. We must begin the pro- 
cess of reasoning at home, and 



96 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

reason outward, to arrive at the 
exact truth. We may have smaller 
specimens here than are to be found 
in other localities, but they all belong 
to the same genus. 

We have seen men in our midst 
running for office, or anxiously seek- 
ing the opportunity to run for office, 
whose sole aim and object is to make 
public duty a private business, a 
scheme to make money without 
labor. They have no other capacity 
— no other qualification — and the 
public cannot be ignorant that such 
is the case, even in advance of their 
getting office. We might go on and 
particularize, if it were necessary, 
and point out aspirants who are 
known to be public thieves and 
plunderers of the treasury; and the 
managers of the leading political 



HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 97 

parties commit the astounding folly 
of permitting them to contaminate 
these parties by their candidacy. 

What we see on a small scale 
around us is going on on a larger scale 
all the way up to the highest posi- 
tions under the government — men 
holding public office for purposes 
of private gain, and when they 
bungle in their stealing, or quarrel 
over their thefts, and are found out, 
an apathetic public is ready to say 
of him who has been detected: 
'' Well, he was a bright, shrewd fel- 
low, and his salary was so small that 
it is no wonder he stole." 

It is upon such sickly sentimen- 
tality as this that public rapine 
feeds, and is daily crowding honesty 
and ability into the background to 
give place to dishonest shrewdness 



98 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

and cunning. This is one among 
the gravest perils that threaten our 
political institutions and national 
existence. Can it be averted? That 
is a question that the public itself 
must answer by a speedy and radical 
change of sentiment. 



LiABor^ 



iins 



Own Cnslaybi^. 



VL 



THE issue — or rather the sup- 
posed issue — between capital 
and labor, is by no means one of the 
unimportant perils which threatens 
our institutions, and presages a rev- 
olutionary upheaval, the end of 
which no one can reasonably predict. 
By a false system of government, 
capital no longer stands in its true 
relation to the body politic. 

Labor has forged its own chains, 
by casting an almost solid ballot for 
this false and pernicious system, 
under the delusion that it was pro- 



102 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

tecting itself. The annals of all 
time and all nations show that the 
masses have been the willing vic- 
tims of the same delusion, and have 
been entrapped in the same snare, 
modified to suit the time and the 
occasion. 

We have had a surfeit of " pro- 
tection of American industries " for 
the promotion of the general welfare. 
That is the theory — the practical 
result was the promotion of million- 
aires, and the aggregation of a con- 
trolling amount of the wealth and 
capital in the hands of a limited 
class, who can meet in the great 
Hall of Cooper Institute, close the 
doors in executive session, and with 
our 60,000,000 of people excluded, 
practically decide what they shall 
wear and how much they shall eat. 



LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 103 

Our diversified industries are di- 
versified in name and appearance 
only. Capital and investment are 
no longer diversified, in the broad 
and catholic sense of wide and inde- 
pendent division, thanks to a mis- 
named system of protection, the 
tendency of which was toward mo- 
nopoly, and concentration of the 
most of the actual capital in the 
hands of a few, and the creation 
of a system of corporations, each 
of which exercises a greater power 
than four-fifths of the European 
and Asiatic potentates. 

In the name of "industry" we 
have created baronies, who coin the 
blood of their serfs into gold, and 
these same serfs have made it a life 
business to give their oppressors the 
power — the power of vast wealth 



104 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

and confederated capital — to put 
them upon the rack of starvation. 
The men who pointed out the danger 
of fostering and promoting monop- 
oly and the confederation of capital, 
under the flimsy cloak of protection, 
have been considered the enemies 
of the public and of the individual, 
by the very men who now alternate 
between hopeless strikes against the 
iron hearted giants they helped to 
create through the ballot box, and 
working for enough to keep the wolf 
of starvation from the door. 

Strikes and distress among the 
laborers were unknown until the era 
of concentrated and confederated 
capital. When our industries were 
really diversified, when a single em- 
ployer's payroll held a hundred, or 
two or three hundred names at most. 



LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 105 

there was neither the inducement 
nor the opportunity to oppress the 
laborer, or deny him a fair share of 
the profits of his labor, for then one 
man could not lift his finger and 
stop the bread of tens of thousands, 
and compel his dependents to choose 
between his selfish terms and the 
uncertain dole of charity. 

It is true, that in those days there 
was no false show of prosperity ; we 
did not see the towers and turrets 
of millionaires' palaces piercing the 
sky, and casting their shadows on 
the bare and unfurnished hovels of 
the laboring man; we did not see 
men accumulate $10,000,000 in a 
decade, and $100,000,000 in a score 
of years, but neither did we see 
battalions of paupers on every hand, 
and ill-fed and ill-paid working men 



106 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

making vain and hopeless battle 
against the scale-armored giant who 
drank their blood. 

For every millionaire who has 
grown up under the piracy of pro- 
tection promoted by law, 10,000 
working men and their families have 
been brought to the borders of pau- 
perdom. There is but one real issue 
between capital and labor: the em- 
ployers are too few and the employes 
too many; that is to say, there are 
too many employes in proportion to 
the number of employers. The 
greater the number of men that an 
individual or a great corporation 
employs, the less the wages and the 
more bitter the struggle to keep 
them on the living side of the line 
of hunger and starvation, want and 
misery. 



LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 107 

We appeal to intelligent working 
men to say whether this is not their 
experience. When their employer 
had $100,000 invested, and employed 
100 operatives, their wages were fair 
and strikes were unknown. When 
he put his profits and his credit into 
the business, and made his invest- 
ment $500,000, and 1,000 men were 
employed, wages were reduced 15 
per cent., and trouble and dissension 
ensued. By and by he put a million 
into his business, and the roll of his 
emplo^^es was lengthened out into 
thousands, till the whole community 
was dependent upon him, and the 
reduction was raised to 25 per cent. 
Then followed strikes, disastrous 
only to the strikers. Having be- 
come a millionaire, he confederates 
with other millionaires, and vast 



108 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

populations are dependent upon a 
syndicate that acts like a single 
individual, and strikes are forced on 
full stocks, to serve as a convenient 
plea for robbing the consumer, after 
having first robbed the operative. 

If the millionaire had not been 
fostered by pernicious and specious 
legislation in the first place, the 
syndicate could not have been 
formed, under which $10,000,000 or 
$20,000,000 of capital, confederated 
and acting in concert, can by a single 
stroke of the pen deprive 25,000 or 
50,000 people of the means of sup- 
port, and whose vast number gives 
them no choice but between ulti- 
mate starvation or the eventual 
acceptance of the syndicate's terms. 
With this same $10,000,000 or 
$20,000,000 in 100 or 200 separate 



LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 109 

investments, there could have been 
no confederation, no oppression, and 
labor would have had a just propor- 
tion of its earnings. 

The problem of labor and capital 
can only be solved by disintegrating 
the confederated capital of the 
nation, and multiplying employers 
who will be content with moderate 
fortunes, and are willing to ''live 
and let live." But is any one fool- 
ish enough to think that this is an 
easy task? The evil was accom- 
plished in a few years of sinister 
and ill-advised legislation. The pro- 
cess of eradication will be tedious, 
if, indeed, it is practicable. 

Knights of Labor organizations 
and Workingmen's Unions may re- 
tard the march of the giant, but 
they cannot stop it, unless the gov- 



110 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

ernment sails upon a new tack, and 
the policy of seggregating capital — 
expelling it from the few arteries 
and turning it into all the network 
of veins in the body politic, is 
adopted. The destruction of the 
property of the millionaires and 
syndicates is worse than criminal 
folly. It will only aggravate and 
intensify the evil. It is a species 
of revolution that only sinks the 
revolutionists lower in the scale of 
misery and dependence. 

They must intelligently appeal to 
the legislative power for relief — not 
by making unconsidered demands, 
but by choosing as their national 
legislators, men who do not believe 
that statesmanship consists in the 
creation of millionaires on one hand 
and paupers on the other. 



LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. m 

The process will be slow, but it is 
not impossible, if the people will 
ostracise '' business " from politics, 
and brain demagogues with their 
contempt. If the current once sets 
that way, statesmen will be found to 
hold the helm, and devise legislative 
measures that will break up and 
redistribute the vast aggregations 
of capital without injury to a single 
vested right. But will the current 
turn? 



SPBGUliAiIiIONS 



AS mo 



Haipional Boundap^ies. 



VII. 



AND yet there is another peril 
that threatens, which may well 
be pointed out in conclusion. Even 
among native Americans, and those 
of our adopted citizens who have 
perfectly assimilated our institutions, 
there is gradually and almost imper- 
ceptibly growing up feelings, ideas, 
and sentiments of separate national- 
ities, which one only begins to realize 
when he studies the people in all 
sections of our vast domain, so vast 
that statists may well marvel how 
the chord of common sympathy and 



116 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

national identity can be stretched so 
far without snapping. 

To say that these slowly but surely 
growing ideas and sentiments are 
the offspring of unpatriotic ancestry 
would be absurd, for where shall we 
locate the standard of patriotism, 
and which sentiment shall we declare 
comes up to the standard? These 
varied ideas are not disloyalty to the 
genius of the Republic, for as yet 
they all have a common shrine of 
homage and devotion. They are 
but the inevitable growth that comes 
with a rapidly multiplying popula- 
tion, and the clash of thought, and 
education, and the indefinable in- 
fluences of topographical causes 
which prescribe and fix certain lim- 
its within which homogeneity, and, 
if you please, nationality, national 



NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. 117 

ideas, and national traits will be 
confined, and where they will be- 
come clearly defined with the lapse 
of time. 

The history of Europe is going to 
be the history of America, in this 
respect, with such important modi- 
fications as go with the fact that 
America has been populated, and 
political ideas and theories planted 
and nurtured, by a people wholly 
civilized from colonial and national 
infancy, and not by nomads and 
semi-barbarous communities with 
whom the process of political and 
social evolution were both slow and 
tortuous. 

All the vital European social and 
political ideas are sown in our soil; 
some of them are growing, modified 
by soil and climate, and some are 



118 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

germinating. Does any one suppose 
they are going to produce a homo- 
geneous crop, it matters not how 
much of an improvement the new 
growth may be upon the original 
seed? 

The Roundhead and the Cav- 
alier, the Puritan and the scoffer 
of Colonial days, live in the States 
of the Union, and although the 
character of their antagonism may 
be changed, it is none the less 
existent. 

And, then, within a recent period 
we have had the most turbulent 
ideas of Europe — the same ideas 
that have kept the Old World's 
nations in an uproar for centuries — 
dumped upon our shores. Their 
representatives do not even seek 
citizenship, and their invective is as 



NAlIONAL BOtJNDARIES. HQ 

fierce against the Republic as against 
the despotisms from which they were 
shipped to this country by wise 
statesmen who used the grasping 
barons of the Republic as pack 
mules to carry them beyond their 
borders, and with them subdue the 
restive workingmen of this coun- 
try. 

By the natural laws of gravitation 
all this class are being drawn to one 
of the natural geographical divisions 
of the country, and the historian 
of future ages will have an interest- 
ing tale to tell of them. The pro- 
fessed haters of all forms of govern- 
ment now, they and their progeny, 
and the kindred element they will 
draw after them, will become potent 
factors in the creation of a nation- 
ality in the very heart of the 



120 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Republic, and we are willing to go 
down to posterity as predicting, that 
the historian of the 24th century, 
at the farthest, will record of them 
that which will eclipse the story of 
Rome, and put to shame the proudest 
achievements of a Csesar or an 
Antony. 

Draw a line from the extreme 
eastern shore of Lake Ontario to the 
crest of the Alleghenies, and thence 
south to the Kanawha region, thence 
to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the 
Mississippi, and up the Mississippi 
to the western shore of Lake Supe- 
rior, and thence east to the place 
of beginning, and you have the 
approximate boundaries of this 
future home of Mars. The mighty 
industries that now flourish within 
its limits will slowly disappear, and 



NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. 121 

the science of war, and the politics 
of ancient and predatory Rome will 
take their places. Conquests for 
territorial aggrandizement and con- 
quests for plunder among its wealthy 
neighbors will afford ample employ- 
ment for its people. 

Its mighty inland sea coast will 
compensate it for any lack of ocean 
outlets, and as it will have no com- 
merce to depend on, it will not be 
harrassed by its neighbor's ships, nor 
need it go to sea for argosies, when 
so many neighboring States and 
cities may be conveniently plun- 
dered of the flotsam and jetsam 
they pick up. 

And what of the other national 
divisions that sleep in the womb 
of the future? 

All the North Atlantic Coast, 



122 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. 

down to and including the Chesa- 
peake Bay, will likely cling together, 
although the chord of sympathy is 
not as yet so very strong between 
Maryland and Virginia and their 
Northern neighbors. But the muta- 
tions of half a century may work a 
wonderful change. 

From the Chesapeake down to the 
mouth of the Mississippi is a com- 
munity of feeling which points to a 
nationality, with its frontier upon 
the Mississippi and the Ohio. 

The great Southwest, with Galves- 
ton Bay as its entrepot, will form 
another nationality, with which the 
Great West beyond the Mississippi 
to the Rocky Mountains, and up to 
and beyond the Canadian border, 
will naturally go at first. Later on 
it may be bisected, east and west, at 



NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. 123 

St. Louis, and the Northern half set 
up as the military rival of her sister 
across the Father of Waters, some- 
times in alliance and sometimes at 
sword's points, with intervals of 
peace, when peace is profitable to 
either or both. When, or even 
before, this division takes place, the 
empire of the Southwest will absorb 
all Northern Mexico, and contest for 
the maritime and naval supremacy 
of the Pacific Ocean as well as the 
Gulf and the Atlantic. This will 
become the great maritime, com- 
mercial, manufacturing, and agri- 
cultural empire of the continent. 

West of the Rocky Mountains 
will be the empire of the Pacific, 
with vast possibilities and wonderful 
opportunities for commerce, stand- 
ing, as it will, as the toll-gate between 



124 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 

the Occident and all its cis-Atlantic 
and trans- Atlantic contemporaries. 
These may be regarded as mere 
speculations concerning possibilities, 
and we have no desire to force their 
adoption upon any one. The re- 
cording finger of Time can alone 
verify them or show their baseless- 
ness. 



